The Ronald Reagan Assassination Attempt

President Reagan waves to onlookers seconds before being shot.

(Library of Congress)

“Honey, I forgot to duck.” President Ronald Reagan’s bantering words were intended to ease his wife’s anxiety as he lay in a hospital after being shot in the chest on the afternoon of March 30, 1981, a quarter of a century ago today.

His aides likewise reassured the public, downplaying the severity of his wound. Yet the President had lost almost half his blood and was described by one doctor as “on the brink.” What’s more, the mechanism intended to assure continuity of national leadership in such a crisis was not working.

Reagan of course had known he was taking on a dangerous job when he was sworn into office 70 days earlier. Of the 38 men who had preceded him, 4 had been assassinated. At least seven other attempts on President’s lives had been thwarted. In 1975, pistols had been drawn on President Gerald Ford twice in one month.

That Monday the president had traveled the short distance from the White House to the Washington Hilton to give a talk before union representatives. Outside the hotel’s VIP entrance, reporters waited, intent on asking him questions about Poland, where the Soviets were threatening to crack down on the Solidarity movement. Tourists and onlookers jostled with them for position, hoping to see the President as he emerged.

When he appeared, his press secretary, James Brady, stepped toward the reporters to field questions. The President waved. At that moment, a man in a tan raincoat pointed a .22-caliber revolver and fired six shots in two seconds. Secret Service agent Jerry Parr shoved Reagan into the waiting limousine, and it immediately lurched out of the driveway.

Other agents and police officers quickly subdued John W. Hinckley, Jr., a 25-year-old college dropout from a wealthy family. In addition to wounding a police officer and a Secret Service agent, he had shot James Brady in the head.

In the speeding limo, Reagan felt a sharp pain in his side and thought he might have cracked a rib while tumbling into the car. Within minutes, though, he was coughing up blood and having trouble breathing. Agent Parr made a crucial decision. Instead of proceeding to the security of the White House, he ordered the driver to head for George Washington University Hospital, a mile and a half away. The decision almost certainly saved Reagan’s life.

Though he made a point of walking into the hospital, the President was bleeding at “a rather alarming rate,” doctors later revealed. A bullet had ricocheted off the car, struck his rib, and burrowed into his lung. By the time surgeons opened his chest he had nearly gone into shock from blood loss. During three hours of surgery, doctors were able to find the bullet, which had narrowly missed his heart, and stem the bleeding.

Before the operation, Reagan had jokingly asked his staff, “Who's minding the store?” The question was pertinent. Vice President George Bush was out of town at the time of the shooting. Flying back from Texas, he could not be reached on a secure line. That left Reagan’s cabinet officers to handle national affairs. But if the Soviets were suddenly to invade Poland, who would decide America’s response?

On an impulse, Secretary of State Alexander Haig stormed into a White House press conference and told a waiting world, “As of now I am in control here in the White House.” His rash words and shaky demeanor were alarming rather than reassuring, and they would torpedo his political career. Moreover, he was wrong. Officially, Reagan was still in charge, and therein lay a problem.

The Constitution provided for the Vice President to replace the President in case of death, resignation, or disability. In 1787 Pennsylvania Representative John Dickinson had asked, “What is the extent of the term ‘disability,’ and who is to be the judge of it?” His question has never been definitively answered. Faced with a world of hair-trigger nuclear gamesmanship and cognizant of President Eisenhower’s heart attack and stroke in the 1950s, Congress passed the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1965 stating that the President could hand over his powers temporarily or the Vice President and cabinet could declare him unfit. But it left vague the definition of “disability.”

The Twenty-fifth Amendment was never invoked following the Reagan assassination attempt, in spite of the President’s incapacity. Aides were worried that relinquishing power, even temporarily, would tarnish the 70-year-old Reagan’s image. His counselor Edwin Meese later said there was “a real concern not to provide any appearance of a President unable to continue to run the country.”

Reagan’s practice of delegating responsibilities served him well in the weeks after the shooting. The public, though generally unaware of the gravity of his injury, was heartened by his recovery and his obvious courage through the ordeal. His popularity soared, and the nation’s affection served him politically throughout his tenure.

The President bounced back, but Jim Brady did not. Doctors were able to save his life, but he would continue to suffer from brain damage inflicted that March afternoon. His wife Sarah led a long fight for stricter federal gun control laws. In 1993 President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Bill, which required a five-day waiting period and a background check for handgun purchases.

Like a number of Presidential assailants, John Hinckley had acted from a personal rather than political motive—a ludicrous hope to impress the movie actress Jodie Foster. He successfully pleaded insanity and was sent to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, where he remains to this day.

A quarter century after the shooting, John Dickinson’s question is still unanswered. Should there be specific criteria for presidential disability? Should a panel of doctors weigh in on the subject? When Reagan was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, six years after leaving office, the announcement brought to the fore the possibility of insidious dementia in a sitting President. In an uncertain world, the orderly succession of our national government may well be worthy of more public discussion than it has received.

—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World.